A coalition of House Democrats recently urged the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to examine the Donald Trump campaign’s claim that they knew about the cyber hack into John Podesta’s emails before they were publicly released.
The group included U.S. Reps. Elijah E. Cummings (D-MD), Eliot L. Engel (D-NY), John Conyers (D-MI) and Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS).
Podesta, campaign chair for Hillary Clinton, has been the subject of a series of email leaks from a cyber hacker known as Guccifer 2.0.
“Troubling new evidence appears to show that the Trump campaign not only was aware of cyber attacks against Secretary Clinton’s campaign chairman, but was openly bragging about it as far back as August,” the group said in a letter.
The group made reference to a series of twitter posts by Trump campaign advisor Roger Stone that indicated that Stone knew about the impending email leak prior to the emails being released publicly. The United States Intelligence Community (USIC) recently said that they were confident that the Russian government directed the recent hack into Podesta’s emails.
“The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts,” the group said. “The Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”